Please join us in welcoming back Palmer Davis, faculty member at the International Center of Photography, the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture, located in New York City. Palmer’s photographic eye was honed over a twenty five-year career as a Madison Avenue advertising creative director. His first photography class at age sixteen was a transformative experience that started him on a lifelong artistic journey. He studied photography at Hampshire College and the International Center of Photography, where he is now a member of the faculty. Widely exhibited and collected, Palmer is a fine art photographer and teacher who is represented in New York by ClampArt. Palmer has created four unique assignments for the Broken Light Collective community, and is generously giving personal feedback to every photo submitted to these workshops. So make sure to send in your work.

Palmer makes pictures that explore the mysterious and the magical in the everyday. His photographs evoke a sense of place and a moment in time. They tell stories and reveal metaphors. Whether the image is an expansive panorama or an intimate glimpse, it is always a personal interpretation viewed through a prism of wonder, dream, memory myth or desire.

Assignment 2: “As human beings, we see in color instinctively. But as photographers, seeing in color is a learned practice. When utilized effectively, color has the power to deepen the meaning of an image. Color can be incorporated in your picture making in as many ways as there are hues and shades: to create visual impact, to reflect harmony, to heighten tension, to suggest symbolism, to push emotional buttons, to paint a mood, to awaken memories, to evoke dreams…

For your second shooting assignment, I invite you to harness the sensory, symbolic and psychological power of color to express an emotion or mood or feeling in 1 – 3 photographs.” 

About this photo: “For me, the feeling depicted here through color is one of joy, of delight, of wonder, as suggested by the tender, life-affirming blush of  pink of the cherry blossoms.  The young woman stops to take a moment out of her daily routine of taking children for a stroll in Central Park.  She is captivated by the beauty and fragrance of the blossoms.  If you look closely, you can also see the children she is caring for at play through the branches.  In this moment, she is no longer the adult caregiver, but has become one with the children, as spontaneous and carefree as they are.  In this moment, her soul is blossoming, just like the cherry trees, which is why I titled this picture ‘The Blossoming.’”

Want to participate? Send in your photos to get valuable feedback from the workshop leader, inclusion in a special upcoming social media gallery, as well as a possible feature on the BLC gallery site: BrokenLightCollective@gmail.com